First Take - VMware's VMworld Day 1 Keynote - Top 3 Takeaways

Holger Mueller

Vice President and Principal Analyst
Constellation Research

Holger Mueller is VP and Principal Analyst for Constellation Research for the fundamental enablers of the cloud, IaaS, PaaS and next generation Applications, with forays up the tech stack into BigData and Analytics, HR Tech, and sometimes SaaS. Holger provides strategy and counsel to key clients, including Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Chief Product Officers, Chief HR Officers, investment analysts, venture capitalists, sell-side firms, and technology buyers.  Coverage Areas: Future of Work Tech Optimization & Innovation  Background: Before joining Constellation Research, Mueller was VP of Products for NorthgateArinso, a KKR company. There, he led the transformation of products to the cloud and laid the foundation for new Business Process as a…...

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I am attending the VMware VMworld user conference held at Moscone Center in San Francisco, with 22000 other participants. 

 

Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Data to Decisions Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Future of Work HP vmware Google IBM Oracle SaaS PaaS IaaS Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Enterprise IT Enterprise Acceleration Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps IoT Blockchain CRM ERP CCaaS UCaaS Collaboration Enterprise Service Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Executive Officer

Ikea Targets Millennials, Combines Sitcom and Reality TV Themes

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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Forsman & Bodenfors, Ikea’s Swedish agency, has turned to boxed themes to support the distribution of the retail giant’s latest catalogue (pun intended). However, like the popular Ikea Hacks generated by its loyal fans, Ikea’s new marketing effort has combined standard reality TV and sitcom themes to create innovative and captivating YouTube videos targeting Millennials.

Here’s the scenario: The show’s host welcomes a millennial couple as they enter an Ikea store and has them hypnotized into parenting their future children (played by actors) through various life dramas. The scenes support this year’s catalogue, which is titled: Where the everyday begins and ends. Each scene occurs in the future bathroom or bedroom of the customers being hypnotized – two rooms that Ikea merchandisers are paying particular attention to this year.

It is an interesting experiment. The target audience is clearly Millennials, to whom Ikea is subtly introducing the concept that Ikea furniture will be part of their lives as they age and have kids. It’s like the company is hypnotizing its audience with a show about hypnosis.

What They Did Right

Millennials have a much wider interest range and behavioral traits than the common theories that categorize the group would have us believe. Advertising to Millennials isn’t formulaic. In a recent study, Vision Critical surveyed 1018 Americans ages 18+ to determine viewing patterns. What may surprise many marketers is that the group followed many genres, ranging from awards shows and network sitcoms to reality-competition shows and MLB playoff games. One thing was clear however: Regardless of the 18 different types of programming marked as popular among the audience, most reported watching less live programming than either Gen-Xers or Baby Boomers.

Millennials are turning to streaming services and social media to satisfy their entertainment and news needs. On that note, this Ikea campaign hit all the marks to successfully target this audience.  Its format mimics popular television programs among Millennials, which include half-scripted scenarios and reality show-style interviews. More importantly, it was a made-for-YouTube production.

Millennials don’t watch programming as much as they “follow” programming.   For example, studies have shown that 60% more Millennials than Gen-Xers (and 129% more Millennials than Baby Boomers) watch highlights/clips of late-night TV talk shows after they’ve originally aired.   Made-for-YouTube commercials have become requisite marketing for brands reaching out to this audience, if not exclusively, as an integral part of the engagement.

The other critical element of this campaign is its use of humor. We cannot undervalue the effect of humor in brand-consumer communications, be it general content marketing or produced commercials.

Lastly, the brand and products are used as background players, not the stars of the production. One of the first rules that has evolved from social media marketing is the concept of not selling through social channels, and it’s a notion that many sales and marketing teams continue to struggle with. Community, entertainment, and education are the pillars of modern social advertising and this effort hits the second element well.

Sensei Debates

Are made-for-YouTube commercials requisite marketing for brands targeting Millennial consumers?

Sam Fiorella
Feed Your Community, Not Your Ego

The post Ikea Targets Millennials, Combines Sitcom and Reality TV Themes appeared first on Sensei Marketing.

Marketing Transformation Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Sales Marketing Next-Generation Customer Experience Digital Safety, Privacy & Cybersecurity Marketing B2B B2C CX Customer Experience EX Employee Experience AI ML Generative AI Analytics Automation Cloud Digital Transformation Disruptive Technology Growth eCommerce Enterprise Software Next Gen Apps Social Customer Service Content Management Collaboration Chief Marketing Officer

Disruption from the Medieval to the Digital World

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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One of the most exciting and interesting projects I came across during my time working with IBM was the digitisation of the Vatican Library. A great humanist project, the Vatican Library was created during the Renaissance when books were literally hand crafted. Scribes, illuminators, binders and printers would work together to create objects that were as beautiful as the content.

It was Nicholas V (1447-1455) who decided that the Latin, Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, which had grown from 350 to around 1,200 from his accession to the time of his death (March 24 1455), should be made available for scholars to read and study.

On his death, Pope Nicholas V (1447-55) gifted his extensive personal library to the Vatican. Containing Latin and Greek codices as well as secret archives of the Popes, these three collections formed the basis of what would become the Palatine Library under Nicholas’ successor, Sixtus IV. A dark and damp space accommodating shelves, desks, benches and a growing collection, the knowledge contained in these spaces soon burst forth.

Under successive popes, the collection grew. Sixtus V rebuilt the library, adding frescos, large bright windows and benches. Of course, as was the custom of the time, each volume was held fast by a solid chain. There were strict rules about reading and copying but books were also loaned. The records of these loans are still in existence. They’d make fascinating reading in their own right.

But the flow and accumulation of knowledge could not be stemmed. This new, beautiful library was soon flooded, with books washing out of the main rooms and into hallways and adjoining rooms. The torrent could not be stopped. In fact, it was bolstered by the Pope himself. Pope Clement XI (1700-21), for example, actively acquired manuscripts and volumes from all parts of Asia, effectively establishing the Oriental Collection.

But not all these acquisitions were completely free of drama or controversy. One of Nicholas V’s first contributions to the library was the secret archives of the Vatican. Now covering over 1000 years of history, the Archivum Secretum Vaticanum separately houses  a treasure trove of precious documents on 85km of shelving. Furthermore, some of the acquisitions have raised eyebrows over the centuries:

For example, the first 6 books of the ‘Annals of Tacitus’ were known to have been stolen from the Monastery of Corvey. In the early 16th century Pope Leo was able to acquire them, and fully knew the circumstances. In 1515 he made printed copies of the manuscript, and ‘graciously’ sent a set of the ‘printed’ books, specially bound, to the Abbot of Corvey. [You can now see translations of these on Wikipedia.]

This, of course, raises questions around ownership, copyright and ethics. But it goes deeper – to the root of power, knowledge and human experience. It impacts identity and community and touches our foundational institutions no matter whether they are educational, political or cultural in nature. Understanding the flow of this far reaching impact is how we identify the fact that we are living in a state of disruption. Elizabeth Eisenstein, in her discussion of the impact of the invention of the printing press outlined five impacts of this “new media”:

1. Experts coming under pressure from new voices who are early adopters of new technology
2. New organisations emerge to deal with the social, cultural and political changes
3. There is a struggle to revise the social and legal norms — especially in relation to intellectual property
4. The concepts of identity and community are transformed and new forms of language come into being
5. Educators are pressured to prepare their students for the newly emerging world

Today, we face this same torrent of disruption. This time, instead of hard, physical and space-consuming books, the disruption is driven by the accumulation of data. But we don’t have the hand-picked curatorial power of the Vatican Librarians. We don’t have a carefully crafted, focused collection. We have a vast sea of bits and bytes loosely connected by strings of relevance, some social cohesion and meaning and an electricity and data grid that spans the planet.

Eric Schmidt from Google famously stated that we now create as much information in two days as we did from the dawn of civilisation up to 2003. A princely figure worthy of any Pope. The Vatican Library pales by comparison:

In September 2002 the new Periodicals Reading Room, where the most important material is available to readers on open shelves, was opened to the public. At present the Vatican Library preserves over 180,000 manuscripts (including 80,000 archival units), 1,600,000 printed books, over 8,600 incunabula, over 300,000 coins and medals, 150,000 prints, drawings and engravings and over 150,000 photographs.

The Vatican Library was conceived as a vast humanist initiative. And it is one that has stood the test of time. But in this push to digitise every aspect of our lives, I wonder whether we are missing something important. As Ben Kunz suggested, there is somethind deeply personal and decidely human about our relationship to books and knowledge.

@servantofchaos What worries me about tablets-cloud is will my Amazon account still be here in 20 years when I want to revisit Kevin Kelly?

— Ben Kunz (@benkunz) August 24, 2014

After all, our memories are deeply tied up with these dusty old objects that haunt our lives. And no matter how many blog posts or videos we produce, they never have as much impact as a table thumping tome. Just think, for example, how many businesses have disappeared or merged over the last 20 years. How many of them will still be here in 1000? Amazon may rise and fall, but I’d lay money on the fact that the Vatican Library will still be there in 3014.

Marketing Transformation Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Future of Work IBM Chief Marketing Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief Operating Officer

Meet the SuperNova Award Judges - Matrix Commerce

Part V of our "Meet the SuperNova Award Judges" series. Let's meet the group of commerce and retail thought leaders that are judging this year's SuperNova Awards. For the latest news on the digital commerce revolution, follow these folks on Twitter! 

The SuperNova Award Judges are are an elite group of thought leaders and journalists hand-selected for their futurist mindset and keen ability to separate substance from hype. Right now they're hard at work evaluating the SuperNova Award applications against a rigorous set of criteria to identify the applicants worthy of advancement to the finalist round. 

MATRIX COMMERCE

R "Ray" Wang (@rwang0)
CEO & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research, Inc.

R "Ray" Wang is the Principal Analyst and CEO at Constellation Research, Inc.  In addition, he is the author of the popular enterprise software blog "A Software Insider’s Point of View". With viewership in the millions of page views a year, his blog provides insight into how disruptive technologies and new business models impact the enterprise. Ray is a prominent keynote speaker and research analyst working with clients on engagement strategies, social business, customer experience, and decision management.   He advises Global 2000 companies on business strategy and technology selection. Ray also blogs at Forbes CIO Central and for Harvard Business Review. Prior to founding Constellation, he was a founding partner and research analyst for enterprise strategy at Altimeter Group and one of the top analysts at Forrester Research for enterprise strategy.

Steve Wilson (@steve_lockstep)
Vice President & Principal Analyst
Constellation Research, Inc.

Steve Wilson is Vice President and Principal Analyst at Constellation Research, Inc, focusing on digital identity and privacy. Wilson has over twenty-five years experience in ICT innovation, and research and development. Wilson is credited with numerous breakthroughs in difficult areas of identity infrastructure and governance, including national and industry level authentication frameworks, PKI systems, smartcards, digital credentials, fraud control, and privacy engineering. 

Divina Paredes (@divinap)
Editor 
CIO New Zealand & www.cio.co.nz

Divina Paredes is the editor of CIO New Zealand and www.cio.co.nz, the premium leadership and management resource for information and communications technology (ICT) executives and members of the CXO suite. She also organises and moderates CIO community events such as the CIO roundtable discussions and CIO leaders’ luncheons. Divina has been covering the information and communications technology sector for 15 years. She has postgraduate degrees from the University of Sydney (international studies) and New York University (journalism). You can reach her via email[email protected] and Twitter @divinap.
 

Debbie Hauss (@dhauss)
Editor-in-Chief
Retail TouchPoints

In her role as Editor-in-Chief, Debbie manages the multi-media components of Retail TouchPoints, including a weekly newsletter with an audience of more than 28,000 retail executives. She has covered retail for almost 10 years and worked as an editorial manager, writer and editor in various industries for more than 25 years. Debbie has served as the Managing Editor for Retail Information Systems News, the Chief Content Editor for Parentgiving.com, and a Project Manager and Copy Editor for a Lexis Nexis web site called lexisONE.com. In her spare time she runs marathons.

Agency Lead

Special thanks to our wonderful agency lead, Melanie Duzyj!

Melanie Duzyj - Agency Lead
Senior Account Executive 
LEWIS PR

Melanie is a senior account executive for the global PR communications agency LEWIS PR, where she leads media and analyst strategies for integrated campaigns. She specializes in B2B technology and works with organizations focused on business intelligence, healthcare IT, HR technology and telecommunications. Prior to her role at LEWIS PR she worked in New York City on the PR teams for healthcare, management consulting and commercial real estate finance organizations. Her client base has included startup, pre-IPO and Fortune 500 companies.

Previous posts: 
Meet the Technology Optimization Judges
Meet the Next Generation Customer Experience Judges
Meet the Future of Work Judges
Meet the Digital Marketing Transformation Judges

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Matrix Commerce Innovation & Product-led Growth AR Executive Events Chief Customer Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Supply Chain Officer

Future of Global UX – Cross Cultural Robotics

CEO, Institute of Customer Experience
Institute of Customer Experience

Apala Lahiri Chavan is Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Cutomer Experience (ICE). Apala's world is about discovery, invention, creation and she feels that maintaining balance between polarities is where everything becomes possible. She feels that the future of UX will be about individuals creating their own user experience and that experience will involve blurring the lines between the real and the virtual. ...

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It was the summer of 2040. Cross cultural robotics was the hottest discipline on Earth and Mars. Robots had become very much part of the human ecosystem by 2025. They played a variety of roles, ranging from housekeeper, drivers (nah..the driverless cars in the past were not successful, other than with early adopters, because people did not feel confident about being driven with no clear demonstration of who was in control…that gave way to the hugely successful robot drivers !) heavy equipment operators , waiters, soldiers, security guards, gardeners, caregivers, news aggregators, cabin crew, pilots, delivery staff , travel agents, customer service agents, cleaners, etc.

BINA48 – humanoid robot

It was, however, since 2035 that Google and Amazon had formed the new genre of corporate political parties that played an international role in the politics of both planets. And THAT is when cross cultural robotics started to become a much sought after discipline.

Robots were an important differentiator between the corporate political parties. Which party had better localized robots to interact with the citizen consumers across the 2 planets made a lot of difference to the outcome of the planetary citizen consumer satisfaction polls.

Cross cultural robotics involved designing robots such that the user experience of the ‘end user’ citizen consumers when interacting with the robots mimicked the exact interaction they would have had with another citizen consumer from their own ecosystem.

User Experience professionals with knowledge of cross cultural design from the ancient ecosystem that existed at the beginning of the 21st century had become celebrities in this shiny new world.

With life expectancy averaging 150 years now, many of the cross cultural UX professionals from the ancient world of ‘wisdom and slow speed’ (as the history chips described that era!) were still very active and amongst the very best!

Cross cultural robotics involved deriving the best algorithms based on brilliant combinations of various cultural dimensions by Hofstede, Trompenaars, Hall, Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, Bigoness & Blakely , Schwartz’s universal values AND values from the current local ecosystem.

Google’s humanoid robots were considered the most brilliant…it was most often quite impossible to tell them apart from a human being… whichever part of the world they may be in.

A humanoid robot HRP-4C, developed by Japanese institute AIST, is a singer

In order to understand the shifting values in each culture and therefore to constantly update the algorithms embedded in the robots, cross cultural robotics experts had to be very highly skilled in terms of sense making , social intelligence, novel and adaptive thinking, computational thinking and new media literacy in addition to their cross cultural user experience design competency.

Continuous Big data and nano data streams based on data being collected from the networked world of ‘everything’ had to be made sense of, in order to understand what was changing in terms of people’s behavior. The better and faster the understanding, the quicker the updates to the robotic algorithms.

BUT, very recently, something seemed to be afoot. The Cross Cultural robotics groups’ hive mind had decided it was time to embed some compensatory values into the robotic algorithms.

Robots that were part of a highly collective culture needed to now be embedded with rising individuality. Those who behaved in accordance with a high power distance culture and respected hierarchies would now start to speak their mind IF they thought the ‘hierarchy’ was being unjust (whether it was to do with shielding corrupt people, unfair treatment to any specific demographic etc). Masculine cultures would be surprised to find their humanoid robots more balanced in terms of gender roles and expectations.

Whatever was skewed in terms of cultural values in each ecosystem, would be corrected by the humanoid robot population with their new cultural balance algorithms…

At long last , cross cultural experts felt powerful …almost god like. They had never really been recognized in the old world…technology had always ruled…but NOW…everything was going to change.

This was a stealth operation since the group was not sure that either of the corporate political parties would approve of this.

So, they delegated different tasks amongst them selves and decided that August 15th would be the day the new algorithms would be updated.

There was much celebration by the group for this impending change they were going to bring about to the evolution of not just robots BUT also humanity!

Everyone waited with bated breath for D DAY…

Next-Generation Customer Experience Chief Customer Officer

Five Lessons for Successful Transformations

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Driving large and horizontal transformations for almost a decade has taught me three things.

1. Transformations are hard, and most of them fail.
2. There are not many transformation best practices.
3. No matter how small a company, there is no such thing as a quick transformation.

Yet, most of us are in the middle of a transformation of some sort in our organizations (and for many of us, in our lives). How can we ensure that we transform? Successfully!

Here are my experiences …

Go across

Many transformations fail because they are vertical. The “IT Transformation” or the “Marketing Transformation”. For transformations to work, you need to go horizontally across your organization and make it a company transformation. Someone needs to define, articulate, own and garner the political capital horizontally in the firm, to get buy in across the c-suite for a transformation to be successful.

There is no such thing as a successful “XYZ Department” Transformation.

Go back

Many times companies fail to change and persevere because they forget the basics, roots, and past of who/what/why they are. Many transformations never go back to vision, mission, strategy, target state, gap analysis, and then roadmap. For your transformation to work, ever vertical has to go back to vision, mission and strategy (at a minimum); then these need to be collated back into an overall organizational view. This ability to “go back to the basics” seeds your transformation with the requirements to be successful. There is no such thing as a successful transformation that does not have a vision, mission, and strategy built in as fundamental raw material.

Go outside

Assuming that you went across, and back, the next question is who will help? Lets face it; if we all had the right talent internally we would not need a transformation. Going outside to source talent and resources helps your transformation succeedbecause you are de-risking your unknown unknowns. While many of us go outside for our HR resources, the majority of us fail to go outside for new vendor partnerships, and new sources of innovative ideas/solutions. If you use the same vendors and partners that you have always used, chances are you will get the same results you have always gotten.

Here is the thing, most transformations result in current vendors being paid less, so why would IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, or SDFC help your transformation succeed?

Go ahead

We are always at odds of how far out ahead we should be thinking. Recognizing that a successful transformation in a large company can take anywhere form three to ten years, it is important that you invest in the capabilities and trends that are a decade ahead. This means that many times, instead of investing in the “next thing” (because you missed it) it is more important in investing in the farthest thing. So if you are investing in mobility in 2014, stop, thinking about a leapfrog strategy and invest in ubiquitous edge computing.

There is nothing worst than a transformation that delivers results after a trend is over, or in many cases “too late”.

Go slow

Once you have the other pieces together, for heavens sake, do not rush. It is important to recognize that successful transformations come from a place of constant pivoting. Many times we tend to go too fast with a goal or destination in mind, and end up missing the street sings along the way. There is no such thing as a successful transformation that stuck to its initial target state designed five years ago.

I write as a labor of love, in exchange I ask that you share this writing if you think others may find value,

-Richie

Data to Decisions Future of Work Marketing Transformation Matrix Commerce New C-Suite Next-Generation Customer Experience Tech Optimization Innovation & Product-led Growth Chief Digital Officer

#IceBucketChallenge: Despite Critics, You Are Helping

Partner, Sensei Marketing
Partner, Sensei Marketing

Sales & marketing veteran with almost 30 years’ experience and now 1800 digital projects to his credit for clients including Morgan Stanley, AOL, Hyatt Gaming Management, Snyder's of Hanover, Hitachi, the Home Depot, Kraft Foods, Drees Homes, American Idol, and hundreds more, including leading agencies around the North America.     ...

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The charitable donation effort involves participants dumping a bucket of ice water on their heads or donating to the ALS Association. In turn, the participant challenges three friends to donate money to the association or dump a bucket of ice water on their heads within 24 hours.

The challenge, completed by tens of thousands of people over the last few weeks including famous celebrities and entrepreneurs such as Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Justin Timberlake, and Mark Zuckerberg, has become a huge viral hit raising awareness and donations for ALS research.

Not unexpectedly, the campaign has also seen the wrath of critics who claim that the campaign has done little to support the cause other than to get people talking about it. Ben Kosinski, a Huffington Post blogger and founder of Sumpto, suggested that the campaign is based on "slacktivism," which isn't helping at all.

"Slacktivism is a relatively new term with only negative connotations being associated with it as of recently. The whole thinking is that instead of actually donating money, you're attributing your time and a social post in place of that donation. Basically, instead of donating $10 to Charity XYZ, slacktivism would have you create a Facebook Post about how much you care about Charity XYZ- generating immediate and heightened awareness but lacking any actual donations and long term impact."

In response to the ice bucket challenge from friends, some have chosen to post videos explaining what ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's Disease, is and how it affects those who suffer from it. Included in those public service announcements were either overt or subtle disdain for the water-dumping activity, suggesting that it has become a social carnival instead of a social good effort.

Others have created memes that feature malnourished children in developing countries with text such as: "So you're telling me that you're dumping good clean water to avoid donating money to a good cause?"

A summary of the criticisms:

• The campaign has done little for ALS other than to get people to talk about the campaign


• People are given the choice to perform an activity so they don't have to donate money


• The campaign is short-term in nature and will not survive past a few months


• The challenge has become more about the activity itself and less about people raising awareness and funds for ALS

Yes, many people, including yours truly, have made quite the production out of the ice bucket challenge. In fact, the volume of online videos and posts is so great that there are now blooper videos of challenges-gone-bad and blog posts featuring compilations of the best and worst of celebrity challenges.

Yes, the campaign will fizzle out when people get sick of seeing the spectacle or when everyone they know has been challenged.

Yes, in some cases people have done the challenge out of vanity and wanting to be part of the crowd, not for a genuine concern for those suffering from ALS.

On the other hand, the reality is that many who have completed the challenge have also donated to the cause. Those who have completed the task without donating have, through their online videos, raised awareness and encouraged others to donate.

The proof is in the pudding: As of Tuesday, August 19th, 2014 the ALS Association has credited the viral campaign for raising $23 million in donations. To put that in context, during the same period last year, the association raised only $50,000. This activity may not be sustainable over a long period of time but the money raised, if invested and used wisely, will provide a tremendous lift to those seeking a cure.

In my book, that's a win-win for the association, the research they are funding, and for all those suffering from this terrible, debilitating disease.

 

Marketing Transformation Chief Marketing Officer

Quotidien Revolution

Chris Meyer

Chris Meyer is a thought leader focusing on the information economy, globalization and business innovation. His latest book is "Standing on the Sun".
Got Nerve

Chris's mission is to anticipate and shape the future of business. He has pursued this goal as an entrepreneur, executive, consultant, author, and the leader of a think tank.

 Based on the ideas in his 2002 book Future Wealth, Chris developed a plan for a business based on a network of thought leaders. He joined The Monitor Group in 2006 to develop this idea as Monitor Networks, where he was Chief Executive from 2004 to 2009. In 2006, he co-founded Monitor Talent, to take these ideas forward operationally. Prior to joining Monitor Group, he was the Director of the Center for Business Innovation at Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, from 1995 until its closing in December 2002. The Center fostered the conversation of leading issues among the business community, developed public conferences,…...

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Innovation is revolutionary only when it results in a shift in power. “Disruption” has become such a throwaway term that we forget our society is reshaping itself through power shifts every day.  Three stories from this weekend’s New York Times illustrate the point.

“The Rise of The Toothbrush Test,” asserts that tech companies are increasingly managing their merger transactions without the help of investment bankers (see charts below). The trend arises, says the Times, because bankers understand deals that are based on valuations and earnings per share, but Google, Facebook, Cisco et al. are more interested in the potential to open new markets. (The article title attributes two key yardsticks to Larry Page: “is it something you will use once or twice a day, and does it make your life better?” The smart electric toothbrush is presumably on its way.) If innovation is on the rise across the economy, then it won’t just be tech companies abandoning the financial engineers.

 

Second, David Carr’s regular column on media was titled “The View From #Ferguson.” It’s old news that Twitter trends point to stories faster than CNN, let alone the Wall Street Journal, but there’s a certain symmetry between Al Jazeera relying in part on Twitter when covering the Arab Spring and Twitter drawing attention to the Al Jazeera news crew being tear gassed in Ferguson, Missouri.

Carr points out that Dow Jones (the WSJ’s parent) has acquired Storyful, “which creates narratives from the Twitter stream.” He sites both CNN and NBC as making similar plays.  A decade ago the hand-wringing among media professionals was that citizen journalists could never substitute for trained reporters; now it turns out the professionals can’t do their job without the crowd.

 

Finally, a Harvard Business School working paper comparing the decisions of crowdfunders vs those of experts (“Wisdom or Madness? Comparing Crowds with Expert Evaluation In Funding the Arts”), also mentioned in the Times, concludes that in general a crowd of amateurs and a group of experts will choose the same projects to fund, but when they differ, it is because experts have a higher degree of false negatives, that is, they do not fund projects that turn out to be successful when funded by the crowd.  In other words, experts exert a conservative influence on innovation by suppressing experiments that might make it obsolete — the authors suggest this applies “in fields as diverse as technology entrepreneurship and the arts.”

Investment bankers disintermediated, news crowdsourced, investment reallocated by amateurs — none of this is surprising to the digital natives, or even the digital immigrant (and indeed was suggested long ago by among others Clay Shirky, David Weinberger, and even in my 1998 book BLUR). 

Each of the digital-driven innovations above is a minor footnote to the digital revolution. The big story is the shift in power, and how it will reshape our institutions. If your product or service is used twice a day and makes someone’s life better, watch out.  – CAM

New C-Suite Marketing Transformation Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth Tech Optimization Data to Decisions Chief Customer Officer Chief Executive Officer Chief People Officer Chief Digital Officer Chief Information Officer Chief Technology Officer Chief Data Officer Chief Analytics Officer Chief Information Security Officer Chief Operating Officer

iOS, Android, Who cares

Brian Katz

fill

Brian Katz is a director at pharmaceutical company Sanofi, where he manages mobile initiatives, including mobilizing the salesforce, building best practices for developing apps, handling BYOD initiatives, enabling new devices and form factors for success, and looking at ways to innovate in the mobile space for Sanofi. He started his career working with a multi-national New York financial company as an email architect, designing and maintaining their email and communications systems, which also involved supporting their mobile computing platforms. ...

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I have people ask me all the time what smartphone or tablet should they buy. They’re usually disappointed when I don’t have a stock answer. I like to ask them a few questions first. Based on their answers, I usually make a recommendation of one OS or the other. This becomes much more of an issue when you start talking to people in the enterprise. It has a tendency to turn into a religious war, both from the security side and executive side to the users themselves who want to use the device they already have for work.

I have to say, I am really tired of this bickering. I have used both, and to be honest, you can be productive on either one of them. I have gone weeks at a time solely using an Android handset or an iOS handset. I’ve survived. To make it more interesting, there are things I miss from one when I am using the other, and that goes both ways. Any of the premium smartphones out there, whether from Apple or any of the Android OEMs can be used without an issue as far as productivity goes. That doesn’t mean I like every phone I use. I love the feel of the iPhone 5c in my hand, but I always worry that it will slip out due to the smooth surface of it. The Moto X is a terrific phone and feels awesome in the hand. It also has some great features. The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 on the other hand is just too big for me, works well, has some great features but I don’t like holding it in my hand. Guess what, other people love the Galaxy Note. There’s nothing wrong with that. Yet it’s easy to get the haters from both sides mad at you.

Then why do we get into these big arguments when it comes to which device we are going to use in the enterprise? It used to be much easier. You made your decision based upon security and for the longest time it was hard to get an Android device that had a decent default level of security for any company. It was just a basic lack of controls around the device that were missing. That made your default choice an iPhone or an iPad. It was simple. The truth is that has changed over the last year and a half and is about to get even better with the next version of Android that is coming out, Android L.

Once you get past security, why does the device actually matter? We spend so much time picking out devices and justifying our choices, we forget the real reason we are buying them in the first place. The goal of bringing any device into a company is to enable your users. The fact that people focus so much on the device rather than how they enable the users’ themselves is what leads to so many mobile programs failing.

The goal of any mobile program that is successful is enabling people to be more flexible and agile becoming more productive and efficient. The way well designed mobile programs go about doing this is by providing toolkits to the users. These toolkits are just the mobile device. In reality, the mobile device is just a toolbox that holds the missing pieces for enablement. A device moves from being a toolbox to becoming a tool of enablement when it is combined with an app that meets the users’ needs. This is a hard concept for many to grasp as they just bought everyone an iPhone or Android and justified it with a study they read, expecting the users to be good to go. Without apps that have been designed to meet their needs, users are just carrying around a toolbox full of dead weight.

Designing apps by following the FUN (focus on the user needs) principle leads to enablement. When this isn’t done, and apps are just reformatted from the desktop or don’t involve users at all, you end up with crapplications. Crapplications are what lead to shadow innovation. Users will always find a better way to get their job done if you don’t do it for them. They have access to the Apple app store and the Google Play app store. For every app you refuse to spend time fitting to their need, they can find 10 in the app store to do it for them. They aren’t looking at security or cost, they’re looking at what makes them more efficient and gets them home sooner.

It’s time to stop worrying so much about which device you are getting for your enterprise and time to start appifying your business processes. Spend more of your time and effort building secure APIs to data stores and then building secure apps on those APIs that allow your users to turn that data into knowledge. Make sure those apps work on whatever devices you have chosen. It’s just not that hard. Let’s stop this religious war based on devices and do what’s right for the people who are going to end up using them. Or else you can just go back to fighting while people do it themselves.

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Forget the Internet of Things. Think the “Internet of Me”

Gavin Heaton

Founder
Disruptors Co

Gavin is the Founder of Disruptors Co, one of Australia’s leading independent strategy and innovation companies. Gavin advises firms on strategy, marketing, product development and innovation. He is also a member of the Orbits program, the influencer network of award winning analyst and advisory firm, Constellation Research. Gavin advises boards and leadership on innovation strategy, marketing, data-driven product development and corporate venturing. Gavin is on the board of Vibewire, a youth-led social enterprise based in Sydney, Australia and on the Technology Advisory Group for Good2Give – the workplace giving platform. ...

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And there is more. Way more. There are scales like Withings that connect to your home wifi to upload your weight and BMI ratings. There are wireless speaker systems like Sonos that pipe streamed music into the location of your choice. There are voice activated home automation systems, barbeques and crockpots that cook on command and even deadbolts that keep your home secure yet know when you approach.

But they are all distractions.

Because it’s not really about the internet of things. It’s the “internet of me”.

Just as the size of mobile phones have collapsed while their power has increased, the same will occur with digital sensors. Just look at the mCube accelerometer that’s only one millimetre across. Accelerometers are the technology that measure movement and vibration. If you have a mobile phone, you have an accelerometer. They are the things that detect that you are picking up the phone, walking or driving (or moving etc) up a hill or down it. They are used in your car to trigger air bags in a car crash – and there are hundreds of other uses.

But the most interesting thing about this latest, small version is what it means for technology – it allows it to disappear. Just think, no one wants to wear Google Glasses because they are ugly, clunky in interface and intrusive in a social environment. It’s as if no one in the Googleplex thought for a moment about the social use of technology (surprise, surprise, they’re all technologists) – and by “social” it is about the three important social outcomes explained by Tara Hunt – does this get me made, laid or paid?

And at the heart of this focus is one thing. Me.

It’s time we forgot the “internet of things” and started thinking the “internet of me”. And then, maybe, we just might (not) see these technologies turning up in a fabric nearby.

And that’s when it will all get very interesting.

Marketing Transformation Data to Decisions Future of Work Innovation & Product-led Growth New C-Suite Tech Optimization Chief Customer Officer Chief Marketing Officer Chief Digital Officer